We open the show with Michael Cole plugging a Roman Reigns Intercontinental Title defense against Samoa Joe… but not just any title defense. Last week Roman got so angry at Joe that he wouldn’t break in the corner and disqualified, so this week we’re having a rematch but the title can change hands on a DQ. The events of one week are taken to a logical next step the next week. Excellent! Compare this to Smackdown, where it took Bryan and Shane a full month to even address the situation, then another week before they actually had the match, and even then they still didn’t do anything to prevent Nattie from getting herself DQed again, and unlike Roman last week, Nattie got herself DQed on purpose and specifically so that she wouldn’t lose her title.

We’re also getting Alexa vs. Asuka non-title tonight. Cole said that if it was for the title, there is “no doubt” that “it could main event WrestleMania,” which gives me another opportunity to remind everyone that Andre The Giant was undefeated for ten years but when he faced Hulk Hogan for Hogan’s title in the main event of WrestleMania, Hogan- who, like Alexa, was blond- retained his title and beat the unstoppable monster ending his undefeated streak. See! Those straws are still well within my reach, and I will continue to grasp at them until such time as they are firmly yanked away.

ALEXA BLISS & KURT ANGLE BACKSTAGE- fine, but could have been better
Alexa wants the match cancelled. She reminds Kurt that last week “Asuka not only interrupted me, but she attacked me. Unprovoked, I might add. And now here you are rewarding her bad behavior with a match against me tonight?” She’s got a pretty fair point. Kurt basically tells her that it’s too bad, and if she keeps bothering him, he’ll make it a title match.
I liked that they started things off slightly differently than usual and Alexa is always great, but I didn’t like the way this segment was handled. This felt like a Smackdown segment where a heel will have a valid complaint but Shane will be snippy with him/her and because he/she is a heel, I’m supposed to agree with Shane, but the fact of the matter is that Alexa is right, and it feels like if a heel had done this to a babyface and the babyface didn’t want the match, Kurt would be more understanding.
Now, of course, a babyface under almost any circumstances should want revenge and be eager to face the heel so this isn’t a situation that would really arise, but I think we would probably get a segment with the babyface coming to Kurt and demanding the match first, or at the very least the announcers would tell us that the babyface really wants this match… and I think that’s where WWE missed an opportunity here to make this work better, because if you think about it for a moment, there are some unanswered questions about this match.
Asuka has been on the main roster for two-and-half months now and has gone totally undefeated. That going undefeated is her picking up where she left off in NXT before her injury, where she was undefeated her entire NXT career as well. She hasn’t lost a single match in well over two years. She never even lost the NXT Women’s Title in the ring; she had to vacate it due to injury, and was then called up to the main roster. Kurt’s stated reason for booking this was that he “wanted to start off the year with a WrestleMania-worthy match,” and Michael Cole told us that if the title was on the line in this match it would certainly even be worthy of main eventing WrestleMania… so why isn’t the title on the line? It would fulfill Kurt’s goal, and any argument that Asuka hasn’t earned a title shot is ridiculous.
But what if instead of Kurt telling Alexa he booked the match because he wanted to open the year with a big match, he simply told her he did so because he thought she would want revenge on Asuka? After all, that is what wrestlers usually want in this situation, right?
Taken off guard and not wanting to admit her cowardice, Alexa would stammer for a bit that of course she wants revenge on Asuka and then start listing off excuses to get the match cancelled. She isn’t ready this week. And she certainly doesn’t want to have that match in a crap-hole like Miami. Plus, having it here wouldn’t be fair because all of Asuka’s fans from NXT are probably here so it would pretty much be giving Asuka a home-town advantage and that would be rewarding her for bad behavior. Here is where Alexa would remind Kurt that Asuka interrupted her and attacked her without provocation… and Kurt would respond by telling Alexa that Asuka is being punished for her actions last week. That’s why this match is non-title. But he knows that Asuka isn’t going to fight any less hard just because the title isn’t on the line, and if Alexa wants to prove herself worthy of being the champion, she had better do her best to be ready for Asuka tonight.
This would emphasize Alexa’s heel cowardice, get some cheap heat on Alexa for burying the city they’re in, give a nod to NXT, make Alexa’s bullsh*tting more blatant, which would then make Kurt to look better for not buying it than he does here where she seems to have something a valid point, make Kurt look more fair for not only punishing Asuka but for also treating the heel Alexa the same way he would a babyface and giving her an opportunity for revenge on someone who wronged her, and give a good storyline explanation for why this match is non-title when Asuka so clearly deserves a title shot. All with some minor changes to just this one segment to make it play into the specifics of this place and moment in time (what happened in this specific feud last week, where the show is, etc.) rather than giving us “generic WWE segment #17,” which is what this kind of felt like. Tell me you can’t see the same thing taking place on Smackdown with Nattie or Carmella in Alexa’s spot, or on Raw with someone like The Miz. I certainly can.

KURT ANGLE ADDRESSES THE CROWD- bad
He starts off by telling us that 2017 was really great and 2018 will be even better. He plugs the Raw 25th Anniversary Show in three weeks, and then starts to plug the Royal Rumble. He announces that John Cena has announced his entry into the Royal Rumble match. Then he clarifies that he meant the “men’s Royal Rumble,” just in case anyone thought Cena was going to start off his 2018 by adding to his already impressive list of accomplishments by becoming WWE’s first-ever transsexual Superstar.
(Oh come on! Don’t tell me you can’t see the gears turning in Vince’s head: “The internet fans love all of this women’s wrestling stuff, so if I make Cena a woman they’ll cheer for him. And we can put him on Total Divas, too! And then he and Nikki will both count as lesbians, which will make it up to the gays for firing Darren Young! I’m a G-d damn genius! Somebody call Dr. Andrews and schedule the surgery for next week so that it’s done in time for him to shock the world with his big announcement on the Raw Anniversary Show!”)
The reason it was so important for Kurt to make sure he got “men’s” in there was because the next line in his script was apparently “notice that I said ‘men’s Royal Rumble match’ because there will be a women’s Royal Rumble match as well.”
I was getting really annoyed by this segment at this point but didn’t really understand why until it hit me when Kurt did that little bit: this just doesn’t feel natural. I’m not saying that a speech like the one Kurt gave here doesn’t make sense here (because this is definitely a time of the year where a speech like this would make sense) but Kurt’s delivery makes it feel like… well… a speech. The words he is saying and the way he is saying them makes it feel like he should be standing in front of a podium, reading an actual speech, but instead he is out here standing in the ring and moving around. WWE wants me to think that this is all organic and natural when it clearly isn’t. Kurt’s delivery makes the whole thing feel completely scripted and put-on, and makes it impossible for me to get excited about these things because he makes all of the excitement feel phony.

On the bright side, we finally get told what the rules will be for the women’s Royal Rumble. You’d think they’d have had this all sorted out before Steph came out to announce it to the world on live TV, but better late than never, I guess. Anyway, the rules are…
The exact same as the men. It took them two weeks to come up with that? Really? Well at least they’re doing away with the “over the second rope” rule that they’ve used forever in women’s battle royales. It also does mean that there will be thirty women, so they’re going to be filling at least a third of the field with one-off appearances.

SHEAMUS & CESARO COME OUT TO COMPLAIN TO KURT-
Like Alexa Bliss! did earlier, Sheamus & Cesaro confront Kurt with a valid complaint. Even more valid than Alexa’s, actually. They say that it’s bullsh*t that Kurt gave a tag title shot to two guys who had never teamed together before, and accuse Kurt of favoritism because one of the guys Kurt gave the title shot to was his son. They then showed some footage that was a WWE.com exclusive of Kurt coming out to celebrate with Jason after the match, and so help me G-d when I saw that first image of Kurt walking down the ramp with a big grin on his face and slowly clapping, he look like a complete and total heel. Not only could I very easily picture Eric Bischoff doing that exact same thing after a chosen heel of his beats a babyface in a match that Eric set up just to make the babyface’s life difficult, but I am 99% certain that I have seen Eric Bischoff doing that exact same thing before in that scenario.
They demand their rematch tonight, but Kurt tries to throw his weight around by telling them “you’ll get your rematch when I say so.” The heels again demand their rematch tonight, saying that they’re ready to fight at any time. Then Jason Jordan comes out to the ramp and, in the most obnoxiously smug manner possible, says “If I didn’t deserve an opportunity at the tag team titles, then what am I doing out here with this?” and pointed to his tag team championship belt.
Jason then got into the ring and continued, saying that Kurt “doesn’t understand the first thing about favoritism,” which I guess is a true statement or else he wouldn’t have just given his son a title shot even though he hasn’t won a match in two months, after spending months talking about how he can’t be seen as showing favoritism.
Jason says he earned his shot based off of his “track record.” How the hell do they expect me to believe that someone can earn something based off their “track record” when they book their product in such a way that wins and losses are worth are less than the paper they would be theoretically written on if WWE even cared enough to keep track of them?
Jason Jordan Jason started to trash-talk Cesaro and threated to attack him, and Cesaro- ostensibly the heel- showed no fear whatsoever and pretty dared Jordan to come make good on his threat right now. And speaking of “right now,” Kurt steps in and books Cesaro vs. Jason Jordan for right now. A referee comes out and we get…
SETH ROLLINS COMING OUT FOR MORE TALKING- He claims that Cesaro & Sheamus came out here with the intent of luring Jason into a trap, which Jason fell for. He then cut a promo on Jason, calling him “self-absorbed” and telling him “you only came out here to brag in front of your dad” rather than acknowledging that Jason felt he was defending himself and his father from unwarranted slander. The slander was warranted (hell, it wasn’t even slander; it was the truth), but Seth’s in ability to understand Jason’s motivations as being anything more than selfishness makes him look detached from reality. He then cut a promo on Jason that can best be summed up as “I don’t give a sh*t about you as a person; I only care about the fact that you are my co-champion with these belts and thus I have incentive to make sure you don’t get maimed because that would be bad for me.” He finished off his promo by telling Jason “I’ll be in your corner tonight, but the way I see it… I’m only out here to watch you lose.” What a colossal asshole! Watching this made me feel like I had been transported back to 2015 and this was heel Authority-member Seth Rollins.
I am so lost right now. Did I miss an angle where someone threw a magical switch that reversed the polarity of the entire roster so that all of the babyfaces became heels and all of the heels are now babyfaces? Because that’s what it feels like.

CESARO (w/Sheamus) vs. JASON JORDAN (w/Seth Rollins)- 8/10
Well… at least the match was awesome. It was the usual story of someone working over Jason Jordan’s knee, but he sold it well and the match worked because of it. Rollins made an “interception” as Cole called it, charging in to cut Sheamus off as he was trying interfere. The only thing I didn’t like was the finish, which was Jason Jordan hitting that goofy Eric Young neckbreaker outta nowhere.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS ROMAN REIGNS- excellent promo by Roman. I believe that Roman really wants to hurt Samoa Joe, but I’m not sure he’ll be able to contain his temper and not get DQed like he said he would be able to. And that’s exactly what WWE wants me to feel here.

SASHA BANKS PROMO- this would have been better without the New Year’s decorations and music around. Also, it would have been better if they hadn’t come back from a commercial with this because the last thing we saw before the commercial was Bray Wyatt coming out for his match. Why would they stick this between the entrances of the two competitors in a match?

BRAY WYATT vs. APOLLO CREWS (w/Titus O’Neil & Dana Brooke)- 4.75/10
The contrast between Titus’ charisma and Dana’s anti-charisma is wonderful. It just makes her look even more hilarious. Apollo was allowed to look shockingly competitive here. We got a weird spot where Dana was on the apron and Bray tried to clothesline her, so Titus pulled her down onto himself, and I’m certain she landed with a good chunk of her weight right on his head (his fault, not hers). This looked like it would create a distraction that would allow Apollo Crews to finally win a match and Apollo hit Bray with an enzugiri and went to hit his finisher… but Bray just turned around and hit Sister Abigail and beat Crews. I’m pretty sure Crews' contract is coming due soon, and if I were him, I’d probably try my luck with ROH or TNA because it’s clear by now that, for all of his talent, WWE only sees him as an excuse to get Titus O’Neil on TV.

MATT HARDY PROMO- there are now two Bray Wyatts on this show. I want there to be zero. WWE’s attempts to do something “cool” or “strange” or whatever with their screen effects hit a new low of pathetic amateurishness here, too, with that exponentially growing split screen pictures crap.

ALEXA BLISS! & NIA JAX BACKSTAGE-
Alexa runs up to Nia to ask for her help against Asuka tonight but Nia says that she has to go because Enzo has a very bad flu (she appears to be bringing him a Tupperware container of soup) which will prevent him from defending his Cruiserweight Title tonight.
Hey! That’s right! There is supposed to be a Cruiserweight Title match tonight. WWE should have told us that the match isn’t going to happen because Enzo is sick at the beginning of the show (although I suspect Enzo is faking it for the dual purposes of trying to get out of the match and getting Nia’s attention somewhere Gulak won’t be).
Alexa wanted Nia to help her instead of going to Enzo, partially because she is selfish and partially because she, like the rest of the world, is wondering what anyone could possibly see in Enzo. Alexa put her foot down and told Nia that “it’s either him or me,” and Nia chose Enzo. So yes- despite Nia having beaten Alexa up after a match several months ago, this is how WWE is splitting this unit up.
This whole thing, from the dialogue to the freakin’ double doors they chose to shoot it in front of, but especially Nia’s accessories- the colored braid in her hair, the Tupperware, the backpack- made this feel like it was a scene out of a WWE version of a Saved By The Bell-esque high school drama (called Good Morning, Little Miss Bliss, premiering on the WWE Network this summer [and you know they could get Mr. Belding, too!]).
Also, if I’m being honest with myself, I would totally watch a half-hour show full of Alexa Bliss!, Nia Jax, and Enzo Amore dealing with and/or creating awkward, B-level high school drama... you know what? Throw in Xavier Woods, Mandy Rose as the preppy girl, Sarah Logan, Drew Gulak, and Rusev, and I would watch the sh*t out of that.
(Lana can be Rusev’s often mentioned but never seen girlfriend from the old country who winds up showing up to visit for one episode. Big E. and Kofi can be Woods’ college-age older brothers, and in one episode he goes to visit them in college and drinks alcohol for the first time and a frat party throw by the Street Profits' fraternity. Billie and Peyton can be those annoying girls like a combination of the Ashleys from Recess and RichAndAmy from the Zits comic strip. Aiden English can be the overdramatic drama kid who serves as occasional comic relief (kind of like Minkus but not as annoying). And there can be an episode about the nicest and most innocent girl in town Renee Young becoming infatuated by the new motorcycle-riding, leather jacket-wearing bad-boy Dean Ambrose and everyone is worried that he’ll get her into drugs and knock her up, but the kids will find out that Dean is just a cool dude and really doesn’t do drugs and stuff. Man. Vince should pay me for these ideas.)

ASUKA vs. ALEXA BLISS!- 7/10
Every time they’ve mentioned this match throughout the show so far they’ve made sure to say that it could happen at WrestleMania, which gives me hope that Alexa will hold on to the belt at least until then.
These two told an excellent story, with Asuka dominating Alexa in the beginning, and Alexa looking scared completely sh*tless of Asuka. Alexa eventually cut Asuka off and started working over Asuka’s midsection. As Alexa got more offense in her confidence started to grow… until she eventually got too cocky and slapped Asuka in the face and Asuka fired up and made her big comeback. They teased us with some very good nearfalls off of roll-ups until Asuka nailed Alexa with an unexpected kick to the head. Asuka then began to dismantle Alexa with kicks to the head until Alexa was pretty much out on her feet, and Asuka was able to lock in the armbar and make Alexa tap.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS SAMOA JOE- Joe cuts an excellent promo on Roman while once again taunting Renee about how he injured her husband. Kurt is quite the asshole for making Renee interview Joe instead of making Charly do it.

BAYLEY PROMO- bad.
This had the same awkward placement problem as Sasha’s did, except Bayley vowed to “win the Royal Rumble and hug my way to WrestleMania.” I don’t think Bayley has ever sounded less cool. And yes, I do realize the ground that covers.

HANDICAP MATCH: Heath Slater & Rhyno vs. Braun Strowman. He dominated them both and pinned Rhyno. No one even bothered to mention that Rhyno just pinned a former ECW World Heavyweight Champion. After the match, Braun destroyed Heath and Rhyno. I cackled.

SETH & ROMAN BACKSTAGE- Seth says he heard what Joe said and he wants to make sure that Roman won’t lose his cool tonight. Unfortunately, just this seemed to get Roman worked up. Then Jason Jordan showed up, acting like he was part of the group by telling Roman to “believe that” he and Seth would fight off Sheamus & Cesaro if they tried to interfere and holy crap I think they actually are going to change the title via DQ… when the referee catches Jason Jordan attacking Samoa Joe.

KANE & BRAUN BACKSTAGE- Kane tries to get Braun to team up with him to take out Brock, and he has even formulated a plan already. The first line of Braun’s response was “I don’t care about you or your plan!” I love Braun so much.

KURT ANLGE & FINN BALOR BACKSTAGE-
Kurt’s phone conversation this week is predictably plugging the women’s Royal Rumble. Balor showed up and pointed out to Kurt that not only did he never lose the Universal Title in the ring, but he hasn’t gotten a rematch since he returned from his injury back in April. You’d think this would lead to Finn invoking is rematch clause, but instead Finn says he’ll get a rematch by winning the Royal Rumble. What an idiot.
Kurt says that that’s all well and good, but he thought Balor came in to talk to him about something else. I was completely lost at this point. It turns out that Kurt booked Balor against Bo, Axel, and The Drifter, and then the lazy f*ck told Finn to go find his own partners. If you have a match like this, why wouldn’t you advertise it? Two mystery partners means two mysteries you can build up and make me want to stay tuned to see answers for. Instead, they just didn’t mention it at all. (And speaking of not mentioning things, we still haven’t heard a peep from anyone official about the advertised Cruiserweight Title match being cancelled.)
Anyway, Finn has indeed found tag team partners: his good buddies from Japan, Doc & Karl. Kurt is skeptical I guess because Gallows & Anderson are heels, but Balor tells Kurt they have history together. Kurt looked really dumb for not knowing something that WWE has figured that so much of its audience knows that they were almost forced to incorporate it into their canon.

WWE INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE MATCH IN WHICH THE TITLE CAN CHANGE HANDS ON A DISQUALIFICATION: Roman Reigns(c) vs. Samoa Joe- 8.25/10
They had an awesome brawl that made great use of the stipulation. Oddly, no one- not Sheamus or Cesaro or Seth Rollins or Jason Jordan- not involved in this match. Roman wins clean to retain.

KURT ANGLE & PAUL HEYMAN BACKSTAGE- not good.
Heyman warns Angle that if Kane and Strowman gang up on Brock, Brock will be “pro-active, not reactive,” except that makes no sense because doing something in response to something else happening is, by definition, reactive.

ABSOLUTION PROMO- meh
All three members of the Emba-she are wearing the new Absolution t-shirt. I’m guess Paige isn’t very fond of the logo because she cut her shirt very low down the middle so that her boobs could push the two halves of the logo off to the side, where she then covered about 95% of it with her hair. And who could blame her? Why would you want a shirt that says something dumb like “Absolution” on it when you could have one that says something cooler like “Paige of the Fall” or “Femolition” on it instead?
Only Paige spoke, which is why this was better than usual.

DREW GULAK (& ARIYA DAIVARI) PROMO- amazing.
Drew cut a promo that Enzo wrote. It was wonderful. Daivari was there for moral support, I guess. The promo announced that Enzo was sick and wouldn’t be able to wrestle tonight, and predictably insulted Cedric. This brought Cedric out to challenge one of them to a match. The heels had a quick conference and responded with a counter-offer. The two of them vs. the team of Cedric and the first person to come out to want to team with him. You’ll never guess who came out to team with Cedric.

It was GOLDUST. I told you you’d never guess. Goldust is most certainly not a Cruiserweight. He also forgot to paint his hair and the back of it neck. It looks terrifying. Anyway, we got…

PAUL HEYMAN (& BROCK LESNAR) PROMO- Heyman thinks Kurt set this match up specifically to increase the chances of Brock losing the belt. The promo was pretty good, but that’s low on Heyman’s usual scale.

A FIGHT HAPPENS- extremely dull.
Kane comes out and chokeslams Brock. Kane goes to leave but Brock sits up. The locker room empties out to separate them. Like I said, this was dull. Dull and disappointing.

A very up and down Raw. The good stuff was great but that bad stuff was boring and pointless.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Cole told us that the “Roman can lose the title via DQ” stip meant that there would be “no Champion’s Advantage,” which isn’t true because Roman can still retain the belt if he loses by count-out. The sad part is that I don’t think this mistake would ever have been made if WWE wasn’t so darn fond of using the term “Champion’s Advantage” at every opportunity.

2. Booker T said that “Jason Jordan needs to understand that he took food off of someone’s table when he took that championship.”
How is that different than any other match Jason has? WWE does pay the winners a purse, right? Isn’t that what they mean when they talk about Kevin Owens or Samoa Joe being a “prizefighter.”

3. Booker T said that he thinks Rollins & Jordan winning the tag titles last week was “the first time in the history of this business” that a team has been given a title shot and won the titles in their first match together.
Even if we are nice to Booker and just limit this to WWE, right off the top of my head I got Cena & Miz, Hurri-Kane, Shawn & Austin, Owen & Yokozuna, and MNM (WWE doesn’t seem to count OVW as cannon).
Then I did some research and looked up some other guesses and found some near misses:
Kenzo Suzuki & Renee Dupree won in their first match as a duo, but they had teamed together twice before as part of a six-man unit with Booker T, so maybe you can count that one if you want, too. There is also Austin and Taker, who worked one six-man tag together on TV the year before plus that wacky Hell in a Cell match on Raw against Kane & Mankind that I’m not sure if it really even counts as a match. Rock N’ Sock also teamed with Shamrock in a handicap match once before they won the belts. I thought Austin & Dude Love would make the list but apparently they teamed a few times on TV in WCW in 1992. Who knew?
And that’s just teams in WWE. I’m dead sure the Gangstanators, Raven & Dreamer, Raven & Mike Awesome, won the ECW World Tag Team Titles in their first match as a team, and putting the belts on a team that had never teamed before seems like the sort of thing that would have happened on a weekly basis in WCW from 1998 until the end.
Anyway, the point is that tag team wrestling been around for close to a century now, if not longer, so the idea that two guys getting a title shot in their first match together and winning the belts is something has surely happened well before the end of 2017, and a smart commentator wouldn’t have gone to disprovable extremes to make his point when simply saying such a thing is “very rare” would have sufficed.

I think Balor is reminding people that he never lost because it’s the truth, but when he came back from his injury he was saying it for a while and no one ever let him have the rematch, so he gave up, and figures he has to earn it all over again.

I think Balor is reminding people that he never lost because it’s the truth, but when he came back from his injury he was saying it for a while and no one ever let him have the rematch, so he gave up, and figures he has to earn it all over again.

Hell, that’s how I would feel if I were him.

Seems to me that bringing it up and then discarding it is silly. It would have been better for him to just not mention it. Or have Kurt tell him that there is a statue of limitations on it and he should have said he wanted it sooner, and then Balor could enter himself into the Rumble as a way to re-earn his shot.

I think Balor is reminding people that he never lost because it’s the truth, but when he came back from his injury he was saying it for a while and no one ever let him have the rematch, so he gave up, and figures he has to earn it all over again.

Hell, that’s how I would feel if I were him.

Seems to me that bringing it up and then discarding it is silly. It would have been better for him to just not mention it. Or have Kurt tell him that there is a statue of limitations on it and he should have said he wanted it sooner, and then Balor could enter himself into the Rumble as a way to re-earn his shot.

He was saying it all over the place when he came back from his injury lol. Even before that match with Lesnar, Reigns and Joe at whatever PPV that was.

Kurt definitely should have said something about there being a limit on how long that lasts, and maybe had Balor make some comment about it and use that as his motivation to win the rumble match or something. Or not say it at all, I agree.